jiggety-jog

we’re home again.

to celebrate the sort of up-endedness you feel leaving one time zone full of family and familiarity and heading back to a place that you’re still getting to know (that you may never know), we gardened in the moonlight. i plucked slugs off my yellowing begonias. i weeded the clover from between the toes of my coleus. i tied jute string around the posts of the porch and threaded the morning glory up our brick wall. i listened to voices jutting out of the moonlight: forks clinking against plates at the italian restaurants, the swooop of table umbrellas closing up for the night.

i settled back on my heels, watching the fireflies wink, feeling simultaneously completely at home (at peace) and itchy: itchy to be somewhere, to be out on my colorado plain where my soul seems to unfold and unfold and unfold until i’m bigger than i ever imagined possible.

so, what is home?

is home the place you grew up? where you caught frogs and watched sunsets and broiled in horrific poetry about this or that crush?

is home the place you have your couch, your mattress, your rothko, your books? is home the moment you brought your baby across the threshold and saw his mouth open and close? is home the place where you gather tomatoes and watch for beets to take root?

is home a place i haven’t been yet, somewhere i haven’t had the chance to imagine?

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wind in the willows

yikes. i’m a little late. [every day seems to slip into the next when i’m on vacation.]

in any case, did you not love wind in the willows? this time through i read the 100th anniversary edition–the pictures are absolutely magical. i love mole. i love rat. i love toad. i don’t think i’ll ever get tired of them.

what was your favorite part?

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vocabulary

henry is starting to articulate a handful of recognizable words. they are, in no particular order,

clock, teeth, cheese, jesus, shut, show, daddy, hi, this

a useful list. it wouldn’t exactly get him out of trouble in a foreign country, but at least he wouldn’t starve (spiritually or otherwise). i still don’t understand, however, why he doesn’t learn a few really useful words like drink or snack or take me outside and i’ll stop screaming.

lucky us, we’re bagging up that big lexicon tomorrow and taking to the skies. yes, it’s true, i get to spend weeks sitting in the belly of the big western sky, seeing mountains and other tall things. i hope the humidity won’t miss me while i’m gone.

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imagination

i am a lucky girl. not only has my posture improved over the past week, but i also got to spin out a week of my life at cleveland state’s imagination workshop. for those of you who are turning up your noses and thinking–writing in cleveland, it’s not possible–think again. neal chandler, director, is a genius. and meeting josip novakovich was beyond delightful: the man is hilarious in a sort of deadpan eastern european way. my list of books developed a sort of bunnies-mating quality. and i’m even more determined to get a few essays out as soon as reading periods open again in september. it’s a pleasant little time-warp to feel like a student and a writer again after so many days of playing at the park and reading sandra boynton. so, all of you with dreams, give yourself at least a week to dabble in them. you’ll walk a little taller.

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lemon lime

limes were on sale. eight for a dollar. eight. what could i do? i bought eight limes. i wrapped them up tightly in a plastic bag and stuck them in my refrigerator drawer. i can’t decide if i’m waiting for some special occasion, some moment when only limes will do, some cloudburst of fortune when i must have lime after lime after lime after lime. or if i will leave them there until i’ve forgotten my tiny round perfectly greenish yellow limes. until i’ve utterly forgotten that limes were practically free, practically begging me to take them home.

it seems like i’m changing the subject, but we had an ultrasound the other day. i say “we” even though i’m not sure who “we” are. is “we” me and joe? or is “we” me and the baby? or do i say “we” just to make it sound less like i had an ultrasound for appendicitis and more like i’m full and ripe and gestating?

however you add it up, we had the ultrasound. and i saw the baby. my tiny lime-sized wonder, twelve weeks brewed. wiggly arms. wiggly legs. ears, all indistinct and adorable. perhaps a nose, but it was hard to tell. and that long thick cord of a tube that connects me to my tiny lime person.

maybe that’s what makes it hard to eat the limes (all eight of them, snuggled together next to the celery and the granny smiths). i’m feeding my own lime. it seems a strange sort of cannibalism to slice my limes for guacamole or curd. and a strange sort of mothering to keep the limes there in the refrigerator. waiting.

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